
aass__P_±_V7 
Book ' ^ ^^ 



ADDRESS 



tl)e Dmtl) of 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

President of the United States. 

DELIVEEED BEFORE THE 

LEIINGTON LITERART ASSOCIATH, 

NEW YORK, APRIL 19, 1865. 



joHnja- iDjSLxriiDsoKr. 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN J. REED, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 

43 & 45 CENTRE STREET. 

1865. 






" Resolved, That the Address delivered by Mr. John Davidson,- 
upon the Death of our beloved and lamented President, Abraham 
Lincoln, and which so truthfully represents the feeling of the Mem- 
bers of the Association, be published in pamphlet form." 

{Extract from the Minutes, April 19 th, 1865.) 



ADDRESS 

ON 

tl)e Sleotl) of 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

President of the United States. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



LEfflGION LITERARY ASSOCIATION, 



NEW YORK, APRIL 19, 1865. 



BY 



JOHKT 3z>ja.xrii>soKr. 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN J. REED, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 

43 & 45 CENTRE STREET. 

1865. 



1898 



ADDKESS 



Hark ! I hear the minute gun and solemn sounding bell ! I 
see our city, the busy haunts of commerce, draped in the gar- 
ments of mourning ; and the flag of our country, which a few 
days ago spread its ample and beautiful folds to the winds of 
heaven, now drooping in sorrow beneath a nation's anguish. 

, I listen to the throb of the American heart, and to day it 
beats in solemn stillness. Alas ! the mighty has fallen. Our 
pilot in every storm, — our guiding star in every trouble, — our 
sentinel in every danger, is now no more 1 Clad in the habila- 
ments of the tomb, the father of our country is now sleeping his 
last and unwaking sleep, from whose slumbers no sound shall 
awake him — till the final appearing of the just on the resurrec- 
tion morn. 

The great calamity overwhelms me, and I feel myself ill-fitted 
to discharge the duties of this solemn hour. 

I would fain draw the picture of the life of our departed 
President — but before the members of this body the task is 
useless. His life, his fame, his name, are as familiar as house- 
hold words. And yet the occasion should not pass without 
noticing a few of the leading traits in the life of this truly great 



6 ADDRESS ON THE 

man. Let us draw near to his lifeless form, and bending over 
the silent, peaceful, eternal slumberer, draw lessons from his 
life useful for ours. Brought up in poverty, and in the very lowest 
walks of life passing his childhood — youth's bright, sunny hour 
to him was one continuous struggle with fortune. Learning at 
an early period of his days that this life was a hard and thorny 
road, he carved his way through every obstacle and triumph- 
ed in every conflict. The thorns of adversity were to him as 
the spur is to the horse. And if he did not view, he certainly 
put in practice the dream of the infant Hercules, when Luxury 
and Virtue appearing to the god of strength, when in his slum- 
bers he was addressed by Luxury — " My ways are happy — you 
shall have a cheerful, careless life if you follow me," and Virtue 
— "My path is thorny, troublesome and laborious days are 
before you, but afterwards glory and immortality," and grasp- 
ing at the hand of Virtue, exclaimed — " Thee will I follow, to 
thee devote my life." 

In choosing the latter, he. sought the only true path to endur- 
ing greatness and honor. And in that dim twilight, wherein 
the bright pictures of youth blend in the stern realities of man- 
hood, and manhood's struggles and trials blend with the rainbow 
span of youth's bright pictured years, he realized it was 

" Not all of life to live, 
Nor all of death to die." 

Without feeling the advancing steps of our lamented dead, 
suffice it to say, that by his own individuality he passed from 
the lowest to the highest rung in the ladder — from the depths 
of obscurity to the highest point of honor and station in the gift 
of the American nation — from his rude cabin in the We tern 



DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 7 

wilderness, to the supreme chair of tbe nation, once the seat of 
Washington, Adams and Jackson. 

Rebellion, foul and hell-like, then broke forth. State after 
State wheeled into the line of armed* resistance to the Constitu- 
tion, till the w hole Southern half of the nation was a scathing 
caldron of treason. Still, with a father's love, he spoke to them 
on that memorable 4th of March, 1861—" Intelligence, patriot- 
ism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet 
forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the 
best way, all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatis- 
fied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue 
of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can 
have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors. You 
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government ! 
while I have the most solemn one to ' preserve, protect and de- 
fend it.' I am lothe to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, 
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cord of 
memory, stretching from every battle -field and patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone all over the broad land, will 
yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as thc-y 
surely will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

Regardless of these tender words, cannon and mortar, shot 
and shell, opened on Sumter's walls. The conflict forced upon 
him, he called upon the loyal North, and not in vain. 

" Thrice doubly armed is he 
Who hath his quarrel just." 

For four years we have been passing through the Red Sea of 
affliction as a nation. We have witnessed our brothers and 



8 



ADDRESS ON THE 



sons go forth to battle to return no more. We have witnessed 
the starry folds of our beloved flag bathed in blood — we have in 
this four years seen it floating in triumph and in defeat, trailed 
by its foes in the dust. We have seen the clear and the cloud- 
ed sky. We have beheld hope and despair. We have rejoiced 
at victory and mourned at defeat. Our hopes have been exalted 
and as often blasted. We have had our day of doubting and 
our hour of humiliation. Yet amid all our hopes, our joys, our 
tears, we have ever turned to the pilot who stood by the helm 
undaunted by dismay, and in serene composure hushed our 
troubled thoughts to sleep. Our beacon light in danger ! Our 
Eddystone in the storm ! 

This, sir, is the hour of humiliation for America. Her Chief 
Magistrate is struck down in the Capital of the Eepublic. In 
the very hour of victory — when the whole heart of the nation, 
with one acclaim, was sending up to the Pilgrims' and our fa- 
thers' God the anthems of praise — when flag, banner and bunt- 
ing were streaming to the breeze — when the loud huzzas of our 
victorious armies were rending the air — when the grand old 
army of the Potomac sent up the cheer for victory won and 
Richmond taken, and echoed over hill and dale, till Sheridan's 
troops caught up the strain, and sent the echoes back again 1 
And from the South came the song of victory from Sherman and 
his conquering legions ; and still the chorus swelled fi-om Thomas 
and from Stoneman, till the whole land was filled with rejoicings, 
and the very poitals of heaven made to ring with the joyous 
shouts of a people who saw their triumph nigh. 

Bright indeed was the future, — auspicious the coming day. 
Voice and instrument were alike inadequate to tell our feelings, 
and the great heart of the nation could only find its outgushings 



DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9 

in the universal song sung in mid-day in the thronged streets 
of our busy metropolis — 

" Praise God from whom all blessings flow." 
Alas ! alas 1 for human joy— the glad song had not yet end- 
ed, when our rejoicings were turned to grief— our huzzas to 
tears. Quicker than with the wings of the wind flew the tidings 
that Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, was shot 
by a Southern rebel ! And faster sped the mournful fact that 
at twenty-two minutes past seven o'clock, April 15th, 1865, the 
spirit of the good man passed into the presence of his God I 
What a change ! Oh, my country ! What a spectacle for the 
present, for future generations, and for the historic page ! 
Well may we bedeck ourselves with mourning. Well may we 
enshroud our country's flag in black. Well may the scalding 
tears run down the cheeks of youth, manhood and age. Yea, 
fire the minute-gun— toll the mournful bell— half-mast the starry 
flag — for America mourns to-day as she never mourned before. 
Deep indeed has been her tribulation in the past, but deeper 
far the tribulation and grief of this hour. 

Misguided men ! think you that in striking down our honored 
Chief you kill that Northern spirit of love for our whole land- 
that by this means you paralyze the heart and unnerve the arrn ' 
of freemen ? Nay — we mourn our grief, but we draw renewed 
resolution from his prostrate form that the labors so nobly be- 
gxm by him, shall go on to a full, complete restoration of every 
foot of American soil to the American flag — the battle will not 
stop — it must go on. 

"Freedom's battle once begun, 

Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, 
Though baffled oft, is ever won." 



10 ADDRESS ON THE 

The last act of this great life — thus ruthlessly taken from us — 
was an act of clemency and mercy to these very traitors of the 
South. They know not what they do. In their blindness and 
fury they sent the fatal bullet into the brain of the best and 
truest, wisest aud most magnanimous friend the South ever 
had. 

Wonder not, my friend, at this closing act in the four years' 
drama. What else could be expected from men who, without the 
slightest provocation, could raise the arm of rebellion against our 
common Country and Constitution ; which, as Alexander H. Ste- 
phens truthfully said, in a speech delivered in the secession conven- 
tion of Georgia, on the 31st day of January, 1861 : 

" It is for the overthrow (the rebellion) of the American Govern- 
ment, established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up 
by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of 
Right, Justice, and Humanity. Aud, as such, I must declare here, 
as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the 
greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots in this and other lands, 
that it is the best and freest Government, the most equal in its 
rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, 
and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, 
that the sun of heaven ever shone upon." 

Yet, against this just, lenient, humane, and inspiring Government, 
they raised their parricidal hands. What else could be expected 
from men who for two hundred and forty years have separated hus- 
band and wife, mother and child, a defiance alike of the laws of 
God and man, men who have sold on the auction block the un- 
happy children of Africa, — who have wounded and beat, bruised and 



DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 11 

scourged his fellow man, and even women and helpless cliildren, — 
who have deprived them of that knowledge without which man is 
little above the beasts of the field, — who have supported that ac- 
cursed and damnable institution of slavery — " The sum of all vil- 
lanies" — and with polygamy, the relic of a barbarous age ? What 
else, I ask, could be expected from men who would, by a process of 
slow and gradual starvation and exposure — worse than the crimes of 
the Sepoys of India, and the ancient tortures of the Persian Em- 
pire ; worse, a thousand fold, than the history of any age or nation, 
of any race or people, at any time, ancient or modern, has ever 
revealed to us — put to death sixty thousand Union prisoners. You 
read of recantations when martyrs were brought to the stake, and 
the thumb-screw of the middle ages applied. But you will search in 
vain for one recantation from the lips of these god-like martyrs. 
Even now I can hear the echo of their songs of glad cheer in the 
rebel dungeon. From Libby Prison — that worse than Calcutta 
Hole, and Belle Isle — worse than Austrian dungeon ; from An- 
dersonville, Florence, and Millen the echo comes, borne on the 

breeze — 

" Rally round the Flag, boys, 

Rally once again, 

Shouting the battle cry of Freedom !" 

What else could be expected from men who burn crowded cities, 
and apply the incendiary torch to house, theatre, and hotel at the 
dead hour of night, endangering innocent life without regard to age, 
sex or condition ? 

The same malignant, fiendish spirit has burned our merchantmen 
and robbed their passengers ; landed helpless babes and tottering 
age upon barren islands, and in affected climes. The last and most 
fearful crime, the assassination of our Chief Magistrate, is, I say, in 



12 ADDKESS ON THE 

keeping with all the acts of traitors, whose motto seems to be, 
like Milton's rebel angel, — 

" To reign is worth ambition though in hell. 
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven." 

But why speculate on traitors and their treasonable acts, when the 
dead form of our loved President lies in the embrace of death, in the 
Presidential mansion I 

Death loves a shining mark at which to aim his arrows. Assassi- 
nation has always been the desire of mean and dastard souls. Lurk- 
ing in the darkness of the night ; crawling behind the back. Enter- 
ing by false pretences the chamber of the Secretary of State — lying 
upon a bed of pain and perhaps of death, prostrate in mind and 
body — the assassin plunges again and again his fatal knife. South- 
ern chivalry ! Blush, my countrymen ! Humanity, hide thy face ! 
Justice stands paralyzed. A Nation mourns. Where, tell me 
where, in the light of these facts and in the history of the last four 
years, where is your boasted Southern magnanimity ? 

The history of the whole world may be searched for a parallel, 
and in vain. True, Csesar was assassinated at the age of fifty-sLx, in 
the Roman Senate, in the year 44 before the Christian era. The 
assassins, led by Brutus and Cassius, inflicted twenty-three wounds 
upon the prostrate Emperor. Csesar had many virtues and many 
faults ; but the charge laid at his door falls powerless when applied 
to Abraham Lincoln. 

William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, the founder of the Butch 
Republic ; a man of virtue and marked ability, met the same fate, 
at the murderous hands of Balthasar Gerard, in 1584, at Delft. 

Henry IV, of France, surnamed the Great, son of Antony of 
Bourbon, king of Navarre,— brave, frank, liberal, and sincerely de- 



DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 13 

sirous to promote the happiness of his people — after a glorious reig-u 
of twenty-one years, met death by the assassin hand of Ravaillac, 
on the 14th of May, 1610. 

Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States,— 
honest, just, liberal, patriotic, of uncommon common sense ; a worthy 
successor of George Washington ; a ruler whom the nation loved ; 
inflexible in right, never cast down in the darkest hour of gloom— a 
man and a President : 

" Take hitn for all in all, 

We ne'er shall look upon his like again," 

met death on the 15th day of April, 1865, in the fifty-sixth year of 
his age, by the assassin hand of Southern chivalry. 

The great metoric star of IS^ew England, Daniel Webster, once 
said : " They can take awav my life, can destroy my name, but they 
can never undo what I have done for my country." Our lamented 
President can adopt these words ; for the benefits conferred on 
America by this man can neither be undone nor forgotten, until the 
grand dissolution of Empires, Kingdoms and Republics shall an- 
nounce to a slumbering world, the second appearing of the Son of 
Man. 

Washington bade farewell to earth, and passed from mortal cares 
to unmortal bliss as an Emancipationist. Abraham Lincoln trod 
the same hallowed ground as the Emancipator of a Nation's 
Slaves. 

Our late President was no more noted for patriotism — which was 
of that high and pure type, soaring above party cliques and creeds, 
and comprehending as his duty the entire circle of States, and every 
beat of whose heart was true to America — than he was for his sim- 
plicity, — the simplicity of great men with great minds. His intel- 
lect of the highest and purest mould, he could take the telescope of 



14 ADDEESS ON THE 

his mind aucl, with the eye of patriotism, look lata the dark future, 
and, through the bursting heart-strings of a nation and the smoke of 
carnage, discern the clear, unclouded sky, and the bow of promise, 
as a canopy, spanning the American nation. 

Honest and just in every act of his life, public and private, known 
and unknown, he has earned for himself a name in this particular, 
which will be classified by the future historian with Aristides, the 
Just ; a name greater than Conqueror. His heart and soul large 
enough to embrace his whole country. Every act of his life 
prompted by the purest motives. Never hasty, but always sure. 
He weighed his words and acts, as in the scale of Justice. His life 
has fled ; but his name will live — it cannot die. Graven upon the 
hearts of loyal millions is the record of his deeds. Death may steal 
his life, but the keen tooth of time cannot touch his name. Genera- 
tion succeeding generation will tell of the great man. Painters will 
delineate on canvass ; sculptors, in marble ; poets, in song ; orators, 
in living words ; and historians, on the recording page, will each and 
all vie, with a holy emulation, in committing to imperishable works 
and words the many virtues and deeds of that great and good man's 
heart and life. 

The four miUions of ransomed and redeemed sons and daughters 
of Africa will lisp, in softened accents and with streaming tears, the 
virtues of that heart who, with a God-like simplicity and power, 
broke in pieces the clanking and galling chains of a barbarous servitude. 

What need of monuments, marble column, or granite shafts, 
to perpetuate his fame ? It is American. It can never — never die ! 
Circling years and rolling centuries will but add increased lustre to 
that name, now bright as the first clear streak of day. And as 
future generations see and realize the full glory of the meridian sun 
of universal liberty, and feel its benignant rays, blessing the land 



DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 15 

with its untold, uncounted mercies, they will with one accord crown 
Abraham Lincoln the morning star of American Liberty. 

* " Should no marble column raise to his memory, nor engraved 
stone bear record of his deeds, yet will his name be as lasting as the 
land he honored. 

" Marble columns may mdeed moulder into dust ; time may erase 
all impress from the crumbling stone, yet will his fame remain, for 
with American Liberty it rose, and with American Liberty only can 
it perish." 

In the midst of our profound sorrow, let us look up to that God 
who in mercy heals all our woes. Our loss is His gain. Removed 
from the world so suddenly ; angels bore, his pure spirit, on the 
wings of love, to the bosom of his Father and his God, to dwell for- 
ever with the blessed and pure of heart, and to enter upon that su- 
preme rest reserved for the people of the Lord. Let us wipe our 
weeping eyes, and, through the cloud of mourning, penetrate, with 
the eye of faith, the glorious reward upon which he has entered. 
Behold the welcome, as he enters the gates of the Celestial City. 
Met by the purified spirit of Washington and the vast congregation 
of Revolutionary sires ; welcomed by the three hundred and thirty- 
thousand warriors who bled and died for their country's cause, — see 
there the sixty thousand martyrs of Rebel barbarity, now clad in 
shining garments. And in that great throng I recognize my loved 
brother, Wilham, a noble martyr for this noble cause, a crown of 
victory upon his forehead ; and, it seems to me, that with higher 
and loftier accents of praise, he tuned his voice and harp, as he be- 
held our martyred President pass through the shining hosts, amid 

* Webster's Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. 



16 ADDRESS. 

the heavenly song of triumph, to the Throne of God, to receive that 
crown which never fades away. 

May the mantle of our departed President, like that of Elisha, 
fall upon his successor. Heaven grant that he may be enflamed by 
the same patriotism ; guided by the same wisdom ; trust in the same 
God. Let us sustain him with heart, with soul, with prayer. Let 
the blessing and benediction of heaven rest upon him. May he 
trust in our fathers' God, and he will not ba confounded. May he 
learn in humility the great lesson of the hour. And oh, that our 
loved land may soon behold the white-winged messenger of Peace, 
— which we now see approaching through the cloud and storm of 
war — spread her silvery wings over America, ransomed, redeemed, 
regenerated, reunited, disenthralled. 

God bless Andrew Johnson. 

" God bless our native land, 
Firm may she ever stand 
Thro' storms and night." 



